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Your nervous system is part of someone else’s environment.   And their nervous system is part of yours.   Every time we interact, we’re exchanging information through our words, voices, facial expressions, movements, and patterns of attention.   And our…

Your nervous system needs options.  One of the biggest misunderstandings about nervous system regulation is that we’re supposed to feel calm. All the time. (or at least it’s supposed to be ‘the goal’ of nervous system regulation)   But think…

There are more people in every interaction than the ones physically present.   Every moment, our mind-brain-body system is taking in information.. from the world around us, and the world within us.  From the people we’re interacting with now, …..

How quickly do we see other people’s perspectives as impossible to understand? How easily do we forget that every human brain has been shaped by a different history? How often do we zoom out (even if for just a moment)…

The harder we try to convince someone, the more resistant they often become. Especially when our message carries an unintended implication: The way you’re doing things is wrong. Humans are highly sensitive to socio-evaluative information When someone feels judged, corrected,…

We’re entering an era that will continue to ask as ever-increasingly complex questions about how to help humans learn, adapt and grow. We’re facing increasingly complex challenges. Across organizations, classrooms, families, and communities, we’re seeing..  patterns that seem to repeat…

There’s a difference between knowing the words and knowing the mechanism. Many of us have collected vocabulary about our internal states. ‘Dopamine menus’. ‘Dorsal vagal shutdowns’. Acronyms from someone else’s framework. These phrases spread because they give us something to…

One of the biggest game changers in my life and work has been understanding the neuroscience beneath the things we so often TELL PEOPLE TO DO. Things like… Just breathe. Calm your nervous system. Change your mindset. Try to relax. These…

Last night, in our first live Super-Regulators™ Neuroscience Academy session, I shared some brain maps and other measurements that reveal the extraordinary human capacity to adapt, update and change. One set showed changes in patterns of brain connectivity over a…

One of the questions we explore in our work at MIT is:   How do we help wisdom travel?   How do we help it move across disciplines, people and institutions that may be skeptical of its importance?   How…

I’ve been spending time preparing for our first live session of the Super-Regulators™ Neuroscience Academy. And one of the things I’ve been doing is going back through brain maps and EEG recordings, thinking about which ones I want to share…

There are people in the world right now who will experience new possibilities because of something YOU help them learn, understand or experience. Through decades of studying and working with human brains and nervous systems, I’ve had the honor and…

We may already know from experience that a particular approach helps people. We recognize patterns in our work and see changes happening in the people we serve. And when we begin to understand more about the biological processes involved, we gain…

As humans, we are born with nervous systems that learn about navigating the world through our experiences with other nervous systems. And this continues throughout our lives.   Something that has come up again and again through the decades of…

You don’t see reality directly.  You see your brain’s prediction of reality,.. …a statistical best guess built from everything you’ve experienced, learned, and inherited from the people around you. This is adaptive when you’re facing an actual threat. It becomes…

One of the things I find fascinating about nervous system regulation is that knowing a technique and understanding what our nervous system is actually trying to accomplish are different (but still related) things. We can learn to slow our exhale….

Your neural circuitry often needs something before it needs a solution..   There’s a moment right before we reach for an answer, when a different form of brain activity is available to us. It’s brain activity that allows us a…

Our brains are built through vibrational serve-and-return exchanges. A massive amount of the data our brain uses to build its algorithms and predictive models comes through our interactions with other human beings. Voice, eye gaze, smell, pressure, tiny movements of their…

Some of our most powerful brain capacities are built, strengthened and expressed in relationships with other human beings. We need other nervous systems. And yet… other nervous systems can also be some of the most dysregulating things we encounter. 🙂

One of the things we are exploring in our work at MIT is how ideas from wisdom and contemplative traditions might help human beings access greater levels of wellbeing and agency. Doing that requires us to move among and expand…

We have ‘experience-dependent’ brains. Our brains are shaped by what happens to us. The past has an influence in the present. AND..  the beauty of Experience-Dependent Brains is that… .. what happens next can shape them too.   The same…

Something you’ll hear me say a lot…    The goal of nervous system regulation is not to be calm all the time.   We are human beings moving through changing environments and contexts. Sometimes we need to narrow our attention…

You (as a human) weren’t born knowing how to self-regulate. But you were born with a human brain. A brain that can continuously, throughout life.. learn, update, adapt, and develop new ways of responding to the world around you. We…

  Your nervous system helps YOU navigate an environment. AND… Your nervous system becomes part of an environment other people are navigating. At every moment, your mind-brain-body system is taking in and sending out information within the world around you….

You are a Pattern Recognition Creature. You (often without knowing it).. Have a sense of what seems to help people change .. and what keeps getting in the way. You may even know that something in the larger environment, relationships…

One of the things I’ve had the honor of working with over the years is triangulated data* *nerd alert 🙂   ..bringing together:   1) what people experience and self-report,  2) what we can observe through different measurement tools, and …

What if the most powerful leadership emerges from those who have mastered the art of self-regulation? Not only leaders who can regulate themselves, but those who regulate the nervous systems of those around them.  By doing this, they help others…

I wanted to give you a little glimpse into what we’ll actually be doing together inside the Super-Regulators™ Neuroscience Academy. Week 1: The ‘Neural Valley’ of Learning & Growth In our first Academy session, we’ll explore what happens as human…

There are billions of people living and interacting and thinking in this world. ​ And I sometimes think about how special it is for someone to devote even part of their thinking and their time to the question: ​ How…

There’s a story we’ve been told about emotional regulation that doesn’t quite match reality. Somewhere along the way, the narrative became about finding the technique—the breathing pattern, the grounding exercise, the magic formula that would keep us cool, calm, and…

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Hope is one of our most extraordinary human capacities. It allows us to sense possibility before we can fully see the path toward it. To imagine that something new can emerge from the conditions we are in now. And perhaps…

I know, I know… you already know growth mindset.. It’s been around for long enough now. Most of us are tired of hearing about it.   You’ve seen the two columns. Fixed: I can’t do this. Growth: I can’t do…

One of the questions we explore in our work at MIT is: How do we help wisdom travel? How do we help it move across disciplines, people and institutions that may be skeptical of its importance? How do we help…

Wisdom asks us to be changed by what we encounter. What does your brain do with information that doesn’t fit?   Something we understand about the brain now more than ever is that it’s not so much reacting to the…

The mindset you have at work may change when you’re in a challenging relationship or social interaction.   Many of us have learned about growth mindset as it relates to intelligence and learning. Research questions start with:  Do you believe…

  Before I taught neuroscience, I taught French to diplomats and government officials. Many of them expressed to me doubts about their ability to learn.. They would say things like ‘I’m not good at languages’, or ‘I’ll never sound natural.’…

I use the phrase nervous system literacy to talk about ‘how we talk about’ nervous system regulation – whether it’s about states, tolerance, regulation, tools, techniques. What I mean by ‘literacy’ is an ability to read nervous systems.  What they…

There are trillions of processes happening inside you right now. Signals are moving between cells and systems, your brain is making predictions from incoming information, your body is allocating energy and continually adjusting to what is happening around you. Almost…

Change has a metabolic cost. Our brains are very.. VERY good at conserving energy when possible.  Of preserving what is already very well-worn and used.    Patterns that have repeated many times require less energy.   Anything that requires less energy in…

There is so much information coming at us about how to optimize, regulate, breathe, count… how to upgrade our brains and nervous systems. It can be easy to be led astray by the certainty we get from certain voices, apps,…

There is a particular kind of magic that happens when a group of people gathers around one question: ​ How do we help human beings access more of their own intelligence? ​ …Their capacity to regulate, adapt, see new possibilities….

  “The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.” — William James, Principles of Psychology (1890)     For more than twenty years, I’ve worked with people who would never…

A question I see come up a lot in coaching, facilitation, and teaching work is..   A question I see come up a lot in coaching, facilitation, and teaching work is..   “What should I do here?”  Or “What should…

Our brain is a prediction machine.   It is constantly running models built from its history – and then using this to predict and filter data about what’s about to happen, and what we’re capable of handling.   It’s efficient…..

Mindset isn’t just a ‘soft skill’, ‘yay, just believe in yourself!’ topic… It’s part of the predictive architecture that leads people to interpret effort, stress, setbacks, identity, and what’s possible for them … in ways that either enhance their life,…

A familiar word can narrow what we notice next.   What if you can be in “flight” without going anywhere? When we say flight, we’re often talking about escape: moving away from whatever we believe the threat is.   But…

I’ve spent almost two decades measuring nervous systems and mind-brain-body signals.. Brainwaves, heart rhythms, skin conductance, eye movements, facial expressions (facial electromyography).   Something I see again and again as people fill out self-report assessments (before getting these physiological maps…

One phrase I hear a lot is: “limiting beliefs.”   And I understand why. I’ve used it before, and it helps give a sense of something that holds us back..   The issue I see is that if we call…

There’s a strange moment happening with neuroscience right now. More people than ever know words like: Dopamine, ‘prefrontal’,neuroplasticity. And I love that people are interested. But I also see something else happen that can disconnect us from our own intuition…

Miss Stefanie! I have an indicator!” A 5th grader taught me something about nervous system literacy.   …   Years ago, when I was working as a school counselor, I met a fifth grader (I’ll call Elliot*).   He was…

Someone can genuinely believe: “People can change.”   And still believe: “I can’t change this.”   There is not one single “growth mindset” for each person.  And that mindset doesn’t stay in some static, fixed place.   Someone can believe…

One of neuroscience’s most popular phrases leaves out something important.   “Name it to tame it.”  is a phrase made popular by Dr. Dan Siegel*.  *He was a big fan of Mr. Rogers (a tv character who wanted to help…

Back-to-school, back-to-work… and sometimes back to old predictions.   There’s a particular kind of energy emanating in the world for many of us right now.. Back to school. Back to work. Back to routines, schedules, meetings, classrooms, drop-offs, inboxes… Even…

Sometimes, the more nervous system language we learn, the less closely we look at the nervous system. ​ “If you don’t obscure things with names, you can sense their inherent aliveness. They speak to you, there’s another dimension that reveals…

As children, we don’t get to choose what our environment is or what kind of system we are a part of. Since we don’t get to choose, we must adapt. That’s part of our nature as complex adaptive systems. Plasticity…

“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.”  -Marcus Aurelius*   We are living in a time of so much dysregulating nervous system input.   Uncertainty, unexpected events and changes.. Other people’s fear, anger and reactivity….

I remember years ago working with a young man that was ready to abandon his science project.   I had created a “BRAIN camp” through a wonderful education organization, where I taught students and staff about mindset, brain plasticity and…

Research shows us that when it comes to behavior change, we have been using a formula that is completely backwards:     When we focus on performance or results, we are looking at the end point that flows out of various…

Whether you call your work mindset coaching, leadership development, learning design, or something else.. if you’re working with human behavior and growth, you’re working with the nervous system.  As I mentioned yesterday, framing personal growth and self-development in purely aspirational…

i love that brains can change.  I get excited to talk about neuroplasticity.   But something I’ve learned over many years studying and teaching the biology of human transformation and performance is that..   Cheerleading or over-positivity about ‘you can…

Meditation. Breathwork. Somatics. Mindfulness. Emotional regulation. These things are changing people’s lives every day. But what I have observed over many years, is that these incredibly powerful tools are sometimes explained in ways that either: a) offer something too generic…

“Feelings can annoy or delight us, but that is not what they are for […]. Feelings are for life regulation, providers of information concerning basic homeostasis or the social condition of our lives.” —Antonio Damasio, The Strange Order of Things  …

  So much of what we might consider ‘brave’ or courageous is actually intertwined with something less obvious.   A lot of what we also might consider as a sense of power and agency also reflects this same skill.  …

The brain is an energy-conserving system. When something requires effort and doesn’t come with a guaranteed return, it gets tagged as be cautious. That tag often shows up as… yuck. I don’t like it. Sometimes that signal is protecting us from real…

We are vibrational beings. At every moment, we are transmitting frequencies and vibrations that reflect our internal state, whether we realize it or not. You’ve likely felt this. The teacher who walks into a classroom and the room settles. A…

For almost 20 years, I’ve been watching what happens inside people while they’re trying to learn, change and grow. I’ve looked at brain activity, heart rhythms, eyes, faces, skin and other physiological signals. I’ve done this in high-performance settings and…

We are in an era of information exhaustion. So many ideas and words coming at us every day, every hour.   What we don’t always realize:   Every piece of this information activates and shapes our brain.   (whether we realize…

An aha I had many years ago as I worked with brain waves and heart rate variability in an intensive outpatient clinic… … was that many people were arriving with an idea that there was some state they were supposed to…

What happens when the neuro-buzzwords and theories everyone is using turns out to be incomplete? When we build our explanations on someone else’s terminology,  we inherit whatever happens to that terminology later.  Some of it gets debunked. Some of it…

Years ago I was a school and family counselor. I had recently finished graduate studies at NYU, where I got to take part in incredible research at the Institute for Prevention Science and at the Phelps Lab for Neuroscience Research*….

There are entire territories of a person’s life that are affected by their mindset.   And that mindset will affect whether they’ll ever even try what you’re suggesting. Specifically a ‘malleability mindset’.. Personality malleability. Can I actually become someone who responds differently, or is this…

  In a previous article, I wrote that every idea you offer is landing on a nervous system (with a history and in a particular state)… if that system isn’t in a state that allows it to open to new…